What does request.getParameter return?

Question

// index.jsp

<form method="post" action="backend.jsp"> <input type="text" name="one" /> <input type="submit value="Submit" /> </form> 

In backend.jsp what does request.getParameter("one"); return?

request.getParameter("one").getClass().getName();

returns java.lang.String, so it must be a String right?

However I cannot do

String one = request.getParameter("one"); if (!"".equals(one)) {} 

or

if (one != null) {} 

This is obvious, because variable one does not return null. Is

if (one.length() > 0) {} 

only way to go, or are there better solutions or a better approach? I am considering both solutions to be on jsp. Using a servlet (although jsp is a servlet) is a different use case in this scenario.

Answer 1

Per the Javadoc:

Returns the value of a request parameter as a String, or null if the parameter does not exist.

Do note that it is possible to submit an empty parameter - such that the parameter exists, but has no value. For example, I could include &log=&somethingElse into the URL to enable logging, without needing to specify &log=true. In this case, the value will be an empty String ("").